Why You Should Never Pay Attention To Online Polls
(Unless, of course, they’re just for fun).
Editor & Publisher writes of the growing talk of impeachment, using this as an example:
…[O]ne of those thoroughly unscientific MSNBC online polls found about 87% backing the idea through late Wednesday.
Why include it, if you know it’s thoroughly unscientific? Nevertheless, we know why the margin is so high: everytime one of these online polls comes up on a major news site, the Kos Kidz go a-begging. Case in point:
Right now, with 70,000 plus votes, it’s running 87% in favor of impeachment.
Let’s show that impeachment IS on the table by freeping the poll!
This is, of course, the very same poll.
The same thing happens with blogs on the right: in fact, the word ‘freep’ as it relates to online polls comes from this same tactic from the Free Republic. Fortunately, some people are smart enough to see through it:
When Washington Post pollster Richard Morin finally answered the “I” question in his online chat, he said, “We do not ask about impeachment because it is not a serious option or a topic of considered discussion — witness the fact that no member of congressional Democratic leadership or any of the serious Democratic presidential candidates in ‘08 are calling for Bush’s impeachment. When it is or they are, we will ask about it in our polls.”
Morin complained that he and other pollsters have been the “target of a campaign organized by a Democratic Web site demanding that we ask a question about impeaching Bush in our polls.”
Just something to keep in mind when you hear talk of the ‘growing calls’ for impeachment. When a serious, centrist national figure such as a Joe Lieberman or John McCain starts talking impeachment, THEN I might worry…
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